Monday, January 22, 2007

UGE –Mad Charles

Not sure if this is going to be everyone’s bag, but in my opinion this is one of the most remarkable and truly insane releases from the Seventies. Mad Charles is a tin-helmeted Superhero (the world’s first karate robot!!!) who wreaks untold violence on the A side but gets all tender and squidgy on the B side. Greg Shaw may have coined it perfectly in an RPM review by calling it Garbage Psychedelia… I could even go one further and just call it plain retarded! Not sure who UGE is, but the label was based in Somerville, NJ and the credits indicate that this is a Laser Dynamics Inc production- there's even a picture of a laser machine on the label!

Thanks and curses to Collin for turning me on to this one! Now the really scary part: There may be another “B” side to this single entitled Sophie The Polish Chicken Hen. The flipside on this release has the letter C following the catalogue number, so in fact it may only be the C side… God forbid if there’s an unreleased album in the vaults of some derelict laser factory in New Jersey!

If anyone is interested in more of Eugene Viscione's UGE, vinal singles, and more garage band music, please feel free to contact me. I am the daughter of Eugene Viscione , the inventor of Mad Charles, the worlds first karate robot, which we also have. There are only two orginials. Sadly, Dad passed away on Sept. 16th , of this year. He is an Icon with many more songs registered with BMI and tons of wheel to wheel garage band music. Mad Charles, also has a cartoon script , T Shirts, book and video to go along with it. We are also looking into all of his music publishing companies, again, if anyone has an interest, please feel free to contact me. This is only the tip of the iceburg. He was a TV and Movie producer, along with being a music performer and producer of so many labels. My email is wetnoze@aol.com. Nice to see you post this. We will be having a website dedicated to all of his projects shortly. Thank you for your interest. Lorraine Zdeb

Reviews of tasty and obscure hook-filled rock'n' roll releases (Glam, Heavy Bonehead Crunchers, Powerpop, Pop/psych,Garage, Surf, 60s Girl Group Rock)...Plus any quirky musings that tickle my fancy...
I created this blog in order to stimulate interest, share discoveries and encourage people to go out and search for the original vinyl. Hopefully this blog might also encourage labels to actually compile some of this stuff officialy.